The Case Against the Supreme Court

By: Erwin Chemerinsky

"Almost forty years ago, I decided to go to law school because I believed law was the most powerful tool for social change and that the Supreme Court was the institution in society that existed to stop discrimination and to protect people's rights." writes Erwin Chemerinsky, one of the country's leading constitutional experts. "I have been teaching, writing, and litigating about constitutional law for over thirty years now. I have argued cases before the Supreme Court." His years of studying, teaching, and practicing constitutional law have convinced him that what he believed is a fairy tale.

Both historically and in the present, the Supreme Court has largely been a failure. In this devastating book, Chemerinsky shows how, case by case, for over two centuries, the Supreme Court has been far more likely to uphold government abuses of power than to stop them. The Roberts Court's notorious decisions - preventing employment discrimination and consumer class actions against the largest corporations, denying remedies to those unjustly convicted and detained, overturning campaign finance reforms - are hardly recent exceptions. We all share the perception that the Court is "objective" and decides questions based on the law separate from the ideology of the justices. In fact, the Court is made up of fallible men and women who inevitably base decisions on their own biases and prejudices.